Hayles interrogates the relationship between the digital modalities and the texts they perform to explore the ways in which these modalities are unique from their traditional printed counterparts. She suggests that while technology may have some agency in the production and reception of new texts (as more of an intermediary than as a simple medium), that this distinction isn’t very important since computation permeates every level of writing, publishing, distributing, and reading.
Hayles adopts the concept of human-machine intermediation as a literal and metaphorical description of the "dynamics of human-computer interaction"
She argues that elit can be understood as a mediator between humans and computers.
Interaction between humans and computers changes how they both work
Dynamic Heterarchies and Fluid Analogies
Hayles discusses the notion of “dynamic heterarchies;” that is, systems comprised of actors that engage each other in the constant operation of feedback loops and mutually determined evolution (think mother and fetus). She proposes that humans and machines may have a similar relationship.
concept of DH isexplained by using the example of a fetus growing inside of a mother’s body. Mother’s body is forming fetus, but fetus is also re-forming the mother’s body; both are bound together in a dynamic hierarchy, culminating in the production of the infant
Hayles asks that we consider the human and the digital computer as partners in a dynamic heterarchy bound together by intermediating dynamics
her point is that the human and computer are increasingly bound together in complex physical, psychological, economic, and social formations
Since our society is smart technology-charged, “it seems reasonable to assume that citizens…young people in particular, are literally being reengineered through their interactions with computational devices….”
Hayles agrees with anthropological research which acknowledges that historically humans have been shaped by their technologies—biologically, psychologically, and socially
what’s new here is the cognitive ability and power of computational devices
“Humans engineer computers and computers reengineer human…with emergent complexities catalyzed by leaps between different media substrates and levels of complexity.”
Hofstadter supplements this discussion by explaining the way that computational devices, like humans, are cognitive insofar as they have the ability to recognize recurring patterns in provided data streams and connect them with analogies. In this way, we should be careful of where we draw the line when it comes to “intelligence.”
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In Afternoon: A Story, Michael Joyce uses this heterarchical relationship to create a new system of receiving the narrative in which the story not only relies on the reader’s inputs to progress, but even to be written. That is, the story may operate and conclude differently depending on the choices made by the reader during the experience. In this way, the computational device becomes more than a lifeless medium; it becomes an intermediary of and participant in the storytelling process.
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In Twelve Blue, Joyce moves away from the urgency of driving the plot forward to present a different narrative experience that encourages the reader to play and experiment without the burden of having to solve a central mystery. Despite the differences here, however, the computational device still plays an active role as intermediary, venturing alongside the reader in discovery.
In both of these works, the computational device uses a certain sentience not unlike cognition to engage the reader in feedback systems that shape the story to come.
Hayles’ discussion moves the second conceptual cluster of Fluid Analogies
Referencing Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of
the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought
Hayles as evidence that computers can function as cognizers the idea that “Cognition is recognition” (Hofstadter’s mantra)
cognition is dependent on the ability to recognize patterns and move from (extrapolate) these to the formation of analogies
“once analogies can be formed, the process can theoretically be extended to analogies between analogies (between analogies…), a process capable of …increasing complexity”
Hofstadter created “Jumbo,” a program capable of recognizing patters and solving “Jumble” puzzles
Another program with this capability: Copycat
these programs accomplish their tasks through fluid exchanges between many codelets that progress from random forays in the possibility space to increasingly “informed” guesses
With respect to electronic literature, intermediation has two distinct ways it might be understood
Literally, as a description of the dynamics of human/computer interaction
Metaphor for this interaction
Hofstadter’s work made more sophisticated cognition possible, including meaning making
Questions
Hayles suggests that humans are being re-engineered as a result of the cognitive intersection of human and computational devices. To what extent (if at all) do you recognize her suggestion as operational in your own experience?
Given the computer’s dependence on human agency, is its own “cognition” ever capable of original production?
Dynamic Heterarchies and Fluid Analogies
Questions